7.12.2005

Boycott of ExxonMobil starting today

12 of the nation's largest and most powerful environmental groups and public interest advocacy organizations are launching a boycott of the oil giant today with press conferences and organized protest. Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Defenders of Wildlife are a few of those involved. You can take action here.

And check out Mat's global warming page. It will take your breath away. It is shocking and oh so disturbing to see all of the news on global warming that is coming from all corners of the earth every day. This is happening NOW. This is affecting us TODAY.

Here in California, the plankton are vanishing from our seas. It was on the front page this morning. Plankton are the building blocks that START the marine food web. No plankton = no food for many seabirds and predatory fish. The seabirds are DYING. The water is too HOT for the plankton to survive. Double-crested cormorant nesting is down by 50% here. Those beautiful, regal birds, the cormorant cannot survive in this collapsing food web.

In Oregon they do salmon surveys every spring and summer. They usually catch several hundred salmon in the spring. This year they caught eight. They usually get several thousand salmon in the summer. This year it was 80. This is likely due to the warm water in the ocean. Read the full story here.

We have got to do something about this. Our president went to the G-8 summit and basically poo-pooed any plans to reverse this acopalyptic situation. He had a chance to meet with the 8 most powerful men in the world (besides Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and the CEO's of all oil companies) and come up with a plan to reverse this crisis that is not IMPENDING it is here. This is unacceptable. He is killing us. Our planet cannot sustain the way that we are living. We have to hit these people in the ONLY way that will make them listen, and that is to affect their bottom line.

This boycott is a good START.

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7.01.2005

We bob in the pool. Nine of us. Adults. Learning to use our bodies again. Some of us are broken by injury temporarily; we are fit, used to doing much more. Some of us are being forced out of our sedentary lifestyles, tired out by tiny movements in the water. We are all relearning.

Faces are pensive. Some are gritted teeth and closed eyes. Some humbled. All attentive, listening. Does this hurt? We walk. Forwards, backwards. Silently next to each other, slowly moving in the water. You can see only heads and shoulders bobbing, falling into our pool routines.

We are here because it hurts too much to walk on land. We learn to suck in our stomachs. Our vertebrae find new space between them in the 94 degree water that seeps chlorine into my skin, impregnating it so that later I will lie on my stomach, ice on my back, my nose pressed into my arm inhaling swim team practice as a child. When I dove like a seabird and swam like a dolphin.

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